第21章
BY ROULETABILLE'S 0RDER THE GENERAL PROMENADES"Good morning, my dear little familiar spirit.The general slept splendidly the latter part of the night.He did not touch his narcotic.I am sure it is that dreadful mixture that gives him such frightful dreams.And you, my dear little friend, you have not slept an instant.I know it.I felt you going everywhere about the house like a little mouse.Ah, it seems good, so good.
I slept so peacefully, hearing the subdued movement of your little steps.Thanks for the sleep you have given me, little friend."Matrena talked on to Rouletahille, whom she had found the morning after the nightmare tranquilly smoking his pipe in the garden.
"Ah, ah, you smoke a pipe.Now you do certainly look exactly like a dear little domovoi-doukh.See how much you are alike.He smokes just like you.Nothing new, eh? You do not look very bright this morning.You are worn out.I have just arranged the little guest-chamber for you, the only one we have, just behind mine.
Your bed is waiting for you.Is there anything you need? Tell me.
Everything here is at your service."
"I'm not in need of anything, madame," said the young man smilingly, after this outpouring of words from the good, heroic dame.
"How can you say that, dear child? You will make yourself sick.
I want you to understand that I wish you to rest.I want to be a mother to you, if you please, and you must obey me, my child.Have you had breakfast yet this morning? If you do not have breakfast promptly mornings, I will think you are annoyed.I am so annoyed that you have heard the secret of the night.I have been afraid that you would want to leave at once and for good, and that you would have mistaken ideas about the general.There is not a better man in the world that Feodor, and he must have a good, a very good conscience to dare, without fail, to perform such terrible duties as those at Moscow, when he is so good at heart.These things are easy enough for wicked people, but for good men, for good men who can reason it out, who know what they do and that they are condemned to death into the bargain, it is terrible, it is terrible! Why, I told him the moment things began to go wrong in Moscow, 'You know what to expect, Feodor.Here is a dreadful time to get through - make out you are sick.' I believed he was going to strike me, to kill me on the spot.'I! Betray the Emperor in such a moment! His Majesty, to whom I owe everything! What are you thinking of, Matrena Petrovna!' And he did not speak to me after that for two days.It was only when he saw I was growing very ill that he pardoned me, but he had to be plagued with my jeremiads and the appealing looks of Natacha without end in his own home each time we heard any shooting in the street.Natacha attended the lectures of the Faculty, you know.And she knew many of them, and even some of those who were being killed on the barricades.Ah, life was not easy for him in his own home, the poor general! Besides, there was also Boris, whom I love as well, for that matter, as my own child, because I shall be very happy to see him married to Natacha - there was poor Boris who always came home from the attacks paler than a corpse and who could not keep from moaning with us.""And Michael?" questioned Rouletabille.
"Oh, Michael only came towards the last.He is a new orderly to the general.The government at St.Petersburg sent him, because of course they couldn't help learning that Boris rather lacked zeal in repressing the students and did not encourage the general in being as severe as was necessary for the safety of the Empire.But Michael, he has a heart of stone; he knows nothing but the countersign and massacres fathers and mothers, crying, 'Vive le Tsar!' Truly, it seems his heart can only be touched by the sight of Natacha.And that again has caused a good deal of anxiety to Feodor and me.It has caught us in a useless complication that we would have liked to end by the prompt marriage of Natacha and Boris.
But Natacha, to our great surprise, has not wished it to be so.No, she has not wished it, saying that there is always time to think of her wedding and that she is in no hurry to leave us.Meantime she entertains herself with this Michael as if she did not fear his passion, and neither has Michael the desperate air of a man who knows the definite engagement of Natacha and Boris.And my step-daughter is not a coquette.No, no.No one can say she is a coquette.At least, no one had been able to say it up to the time that Michael arrived.Can it be that she is a coquette? They are mysterious, these young girls, very mysterious, above all when they have that calm and tranquil look that Natacha always has; a face, monsieur, as you have noticed perhaps, whose beauty is rather passive whatever one says and does, excepting when the volleys in the streets kill her young comrades of the schools.Then I have seen her almost faint, which proves she has a great heart under her tranquil beauty.Poor Natacha! I have seen her excited as Iover the life of her father.My little friend, I have seen her searching in the middle of the night, with me, for infernal machines under the furniture, and then she has expressed the opinion that it is nervous, childish, unworthy of us to act like that, like timid beasts under the sofas, and she has left me to search by myself.True, she never quits the general.She is more reassured, and is reassuring to him, at his side.It has an excellent moral effect on him, while I walk about and search like a beast.And she has become as fatalistic as he, and now she sings verses to the guzla, like Boris, or talks in corners with Michael, which makes the two enraged each with the other.They are curious, the young women of St.Petersburg and Moscow, very curious.We were not like that in our time, at Orel.We did not try to enrage people.We would have received a box on the ears if we had."Natacha came in upon this conversation, happy, in white voile, fresh and smiling like a girl who had passed an excellent night.